UKIPT Nottingham

This was my first UKIPT and was at my local poker room Dusk Till Dawn. I had a few friends coming up to play in it so it looked to be a good weekend. I was my usual unorganised self and didn't preregister but thought I would be allright on the day.....I lended up being 46th alternate on the 2nd day lol Luckily it went up to 80 alternates!! So I got in.

I managed to have a pretty non-eventful first day and get through to day 2 with an average chip stack. One of my friends (Sim Mahon) was on the same table as Devilfish and went from shortstack to busting Devilfish in about 15hands and a very comfortable chip stack going into day 2.

Day 2 our table broke pretty quick which was very welcoming as I was to the left of a very aggressive young player with a huge stack and to the right of Romano Pizzo who plays a lot of hands so I was stuck with a just below average stack and no cards/good spots. I then got moved to a table with Maria Demetriou, some other players and an Irish Pokerstars Pro who was very chatty/offered out bananas. Can't remember too much about the rest of the day other than I outlasted Sim :) and was down to the last 2 tables of the tournament!!

Day 3 we started off by getting some small interviews, video shots and photos. It's pretty strange getting this done as I don't ever have to talk in front of a camera to go out on channel 4! The poker started pretty slow with out table gradually knocking out most of the players to get to the final table. With 11 to go I was very lucky with and allin where the button opened and I 3bet shoved KQo for 14bb from the small blind only for the big blind to wake up with AKo.....I flop 2 pair :D and get to the final table with a good stack.

Final Table: This was the first time I had played on the TV table all tournament, it was bright and had comfy chairs. Everyone was playing quite tentatively until we skipped a blind level due to time constraints. This put everyone quite a bit shorter and we lost the first player. This set of a chain of allin coinflips with 4 people at risk with no knockout until it was my turn; 66 vs AQs was pretty annoying to lose but I was really happy to reach 7th out of 1058 people!! for the biggest live UK tournament field size. I got £13.5k (£11k for me after I paid out a % swap with a friend).

Would have certainly taken 7th at the start of the tournament so i'm happy with the result but it would have been sweet to win!

(Me busting out on final table >>>>)

Sims blog on the UKIPT Nottingham